Nobody Ever Became A Writer Just By

Working-girls, In Pairs And Groups And Swarms, Loitered By These Windows, Choosing Their Future Boudoirs From Some Resplendent Display Which Included Even A Man's Silk Pajamas Laid Domestically Across The Bed. They Stood In Front Of The Jewelry Stores And Picked Out Their Engagement Rings, And Their Wedding Rings And Their Platinum Wrist Watches, And Then Drifted On To Inspect The Feather Fans And Opera Cloaks; Meanwhile Digesting The Sandwiches And Sundaes They Had Eaten For Lunch.

That Is Part Of The Beauty Of All Literature. You Discover That Your Longings Are Universal Longings, That You're Not Lonely And Isolated From Anyone. You Belong.

They Seemed Nearer, Not Only Mentally, But Physically When They Read ... Their Chance Was To Make Everything Fine And Finished And Rich And Imaginative; They Must Bend Tiny Golden Tentacles From His Imagination To Hers, That Would Take The Place Of The Great, Deep Love That Was Never So Near, Yet Never So Much Of A Dream.

He Must Have Felt That He Had Lost The Old Warm World, Paid A High Price For Living Too Long With A Single Dream. He Must Have Looked Up At An Unfamiliar Sky Through Frightening Leaves And Shivered As He Found What A Grotesque Thing A Rose Is And How Raw The Sunlight Was Upon The Scarcely Created Grass. A New World, Material Without Being Real, Where Poor Ghosts, Breathing Dreams Like Air, Drifted Fortuitously About...like That Ashen, Fantastic Figure Gliding Toward Him Through The Amorphous Trees.

Looking Back Over A Decade One Sees The Ideal Of A University Become A Myth, A Vision, A Meadow Lark Among The Smoke Stacks. Yet Perhaps It Is There At Princeton, Only More Elusive Than Under The Skies Of The Prussian Rhineland Or Oxfordshire; Or Perhaps Some Men Come Upon It Suddenly And Possess It, While Others Wander Forever Outside. Even These Seek In Vain Through Middle Age For Any Corner Of The Republic That Preserves So Much Of What Is Fair, Gracious, Charming And Honorable In American Life.